Democracy, rationality, environment, history, science, real news, minorities & underdogs 🇪🇺
2/n on May 10, 1933, university students burned over 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books, presaging an era of state censorship & control of culture. On the evening of May 10, in most university towns, right-wing students marched in 
2/n In 1941, the Nazis invaded; killing squads arrived, murdering 400 Jews on the streets in a pogrom. The rest of the Jews of Drohobycz were ultimately forced into a ghetto. 
2/n She has sometimes been referred to as the “Polish Anne Frank”. This is probably due to the fact that she was near to Anne in age and also because she wrote in a similar personal style. Often, her diary entries were more about her relationships with family and friends 
2/n across the territories slated for eventual annexation. Most of the killings were arranged in a form of forced disappearances from multiple cities and towns upon the German arrival. 
2/n and continuing through April 15th, 1943. He wrote about a wide variety of subjects of importance to the ghetto residents as they struggled to survive the harsh conditions imposed by lack of food, medicine, and other basic necessities.
2/n But not in Saint-Alban.
Gena Turgel (née Goldfinger 1923-2018) was 16 when the Nazis bombed her town of Kraków, Poland, in September 1939. Two years later, she, her mother and 4 of her 9 siblings moved to the ghetto, with only a sack of potatoes, flour and a few personal belongings. One brother was ⬇️
2/n Highly assimilated Jews throughout Hungary were lulled into a false sense of security. But that changed when the tide of war shifted, and the German advance into Eastern Europe and Russia was permanently stalled in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.
2/n Alfred Hirsch, known as Fredy, was born in Aachen, Germany in 1916. In Aachen, he began his career as a teacher and educator in various Jewish youth organizations. An enthusiastic and talented athlete, Fredy also worked with Jewish sports associations. 
2/n official position as cover, endangering his own life to covertly document the lives of others. More than 160,000 Jewish people were trapped in the Lodz Ghetto—comprising the second largest Jewish ghetto population in German-occupied Europe—and thousands would be deported and 
2/n sick people were withdrawn and on February 8, 1944 they left for Auschwitz. Philip Mechanicus wrote in his camp diary a day after this transport departed: "The transport of the sick from the infirmary to the train yesterday defies description. At two o'clock in the morning 
2/n Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed hideous experiments on prisoners, heard of her talents and ordered her to paint portraits as mementos for his racist theories. 
2/n imprisonment. Helga was able to keep a diary during her time in Terezin and wrote extensively about her life while there.
2/n got word that the Gestapo was preparing an “aktion” to transport hundreds of residents to a death camp.
2/n She was the sixth in a family of seven children and had a very sheltered childhood. Her father, Léon, had a clothing workshop. In 1942 the whole family moved to Avignon. They all work in the markets. 
2/n The Kovno ghetto had 2 parts, called the "small" and "large" ghetto. The Germans destroyed the small ghetto on October 4, 1941, and killed almost all of its inhabitants at the Ninth Fort. Later that same month, on October 29, 1941,
2/n Thousands of Jewish refugees entered the country from Germany, Austria, Serbia, Greece and Yugoslavia, hoping to continue on to the Land of Israel or other places of refuge. Following the German occupation in 1943, the Albanian population, in an extraordinary act,
2/n with his programs of “social Darwinism” and “racial hygiene,” which included the removal of all Jewish and female doctors from their posts in April and June of 1933, often replacing them with medical students. While female doctors might still be allowed to work in midwifery,
2/n A rebel at heart, Lisette couldn’t stand the Occupation. She wore a Cross of Lorraine – the symbol of Free France – under her jacket collar. She’d take any opportunity she could to thumb her nose behind a German soldier’s back – she wasn’t shy; she’d do it in full view. 
that played a role in the conviction of Nazi war criminals. As a Spanish republican he was exiled in France in 1939. He was recruited by the French Foreign Legion and French Army and captured in 1940 by the Germans. Boix, like over 7,000 Spaniards, was an inmate in the Mauthausen
2/n He was carrying false identity papers under an assumed name of Jan Baras. He was first taken to Tarnow prison and then sent to Auschwitz, arriving there, along with 727 other Polish men, on June 14, 1940. It was the first prisoner transport to arrive in Auschwitz.